CRL and the Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC) work together to identify, preserve, and provide digital access to important, at-risk, primary legal and government publications from U.S. and other national jurisdictions. The long-running partnership (established in August 2010) leverages the membership and resources of the two organizations to:

digitize and make accessible material identified by the partnership as strategic priorities;

provide descriptive records and metadata to facilitate discovery through local catalogs and other discovery solutions;

The Collection

The Global Resources Law Partnership digitizes critical primary source publications of interest to the CRL community and provides access to the rich collection of materials through the LLMC Digital[3]database. To date LLMC has digitized over 25,000 volumes (over 19 million pages) of historical legal publications from CRL and sponsored collections. These include:

U.S. state and Canadian provincial legislative serials, covering nearly every state and province (over 13,000 volumes);

Historical legal treatises from CRL’s collections (over 700 titles)

African legal documents from the British colonial and post-colonial eras, selected from the Common Law Abroad bibliography (2001)

Comprehensive collections of historical legal documents and publications from Haiti and Cuba

Rare official gazettes from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf area; and

An array of additional resources from South and Southeast Asia, Europe, and elsewhere.

A joint CRL-LLMC committee[4] guides prioritization of collections for digitization. Materials are chosen that support the interests of CRL libraries and augment CRL collection strengths in area and international studies. Potential uses of LLMC-Digital content reflect the growing importance of primary source legal documents for social science and humanities research. Statutes, court journals, case reports, treatises and other legal texts support research on topics such as international relations, global trade, environmental policy, labor politics, civil rights, and immigration.

Scanning is performed primarily from hard-copy volumes. Preservation is central to the mission of LLMC, and print volumes donated for scanning are stored in a secure "dark" archive to ensure the survival of legacy primary government and legal publications.

Access

Through the partnership, CRL libraries have access to the LLMC Digital[5] database. As of September 2018, LLMC Digital included more than 12,000 titles in 123,000 volumes (over 72 million pages) covering the U.S., Canada, and a range of other jurisdictions.

Records for all holdings in LLMC Digital can be downloaded from OCLC through WorldShare Collection Manager[6]. Records for materials digitized through the CRL/LLMC partnership are are included in CRL’s catalog and can be requested from CRL[7] for loading into local catalogs.

Content plan for 2017-2020

CRL and LLMC work jointly to set priorities for each three-year partnership cycle. Topics and volumes targeted for inclusion in LLMC Digital during 2017-2020 include:

Up to 5,000 volumes US state legislative journals and gap materials to complete this collection

450 volumes from South Asia, Eastern Europe, and other areas as prioritized by the joint committee

Augmenting the work of the partnership in the area of State legislative journals LLMC recently began a major initiative to digitize the Early State Records microfilm collection, raising funds from among its members to scan records of the 13 original colonies plus Maine and Florida. CRL and LLMC are seeking funds to continue digitization of remaining states through Phase 2 (see CRL's review in eDesiderata[8]).